Background and Leadership of Operation United Shield
The political situation in Somalia deteriorated throughout 1993 and 1994, until it was determined that UN peacekeeping forces were in unacceptable jeopardy. On 10 January 1995 the Pentagon announced that 4,000 US CENTCOM personnel (including 2,600 U.S. Marines) would be deployed to Somalia for Operation United Shield to assist in the final withdrawal of United Nations peacekeeping troops from Somalia. At that time, the peacekeeping force remaining in Somalia consisted of a total of approximately 2,500 troops from Pakistan and Bangladesh. The decision came in response to a request from the U.N. for American protection of its peacekeeping forces serving in the war-torn African nation. The United Nations Security Council established 31 March 1995 as the deadline for the departure of all its forces participating in U.N. operations in Somalia.
LtGen Anthony Zinni (Commanding General, I Marine Expeditionary Force) was given command of the operation, which was to ensure the safe execution of an amphibious withdrawal. General Zinni, who served as Director for Operations for UNITAF during Operation Restore Hope in 1992-1993, knew most of the top Somali leaders at the time of Operation United Shield.
The commanders utilized a 4,000 man air-ground task force to cover the withdrawal and prevent further casualties, while a seaborne coalition of American, Italian, Pakistani, French, British, and Malaysian naval vessels waited just off the coast of Mogadishu to accept the withdrawing forces.
Read more about this topic: Operation United Shield
Famous quotes containing the words background and, background, leadership, operation, united and/or shield:
“... every experience in life enriches one’s background and should teach valuable lessons.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“During the first World War women in the United States had a chance to try their capacities in wider fields of executive leadership in industry. Must we always wait for war to give us opportunity? And must the pendulum always swing back in the busy world of work and workers during times of peace?”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“It requires a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding. The only idea of wit, or rather that inferior variety of the electric talent which prevails occasionally in the North, and which, under the name of “Wut,” is so infinitely distressing to people of good taste, is laughing immoderately at stated intervals.”
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845)
“Television is an excellent system when one has nothing to lose, as is the case with a nomadic and rootless country like the United States, but in Europe the affect of television is that of a bulldozer which reduces culture to the lowest possible denominator.”
—Marc Fumaroli (b. 1932)
“The lichen on the rocks is a rude and simple shield which beginning and imperfect Nature suspended there. Still hangs her wrinkled trophy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)